Book Review: Greek Lessons By Han Kang tarnslated by Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won

Greek Lessons by Han Kang
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Not as accessible as her The Vegetarian, but a wonderful story of a going blind man and a non speaking woman and certainly worth a read. The audio really helps with two voices, I suspect a text only read might prove harder to follow. The author is an amazingly innovative writer.

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Book Review: The Ten Loves of Mr. Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami , translated by Allison Markin Powell

The Ten Loves of Mr. Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For me this novel was not as good as Strange Weather in Tokyo but I still enjoyed the read. Like Strange Weather it address the difficulties of modern relationships. 10 women give their story of their relationship with Nishino at different stages of his life. These are not rendered chronologically . We never really hear him, his voice and in many ways we and many /all? of the women never really knew him , nor understood him. They all break away from him even though he would appear to be a 'catch'. They say he doesn't want commitment, but perhaps it is the women who are commitment phobes?, some are only after sex, some are not really interested in Nishino the person, but he does leave his mark on them all.
I like Kawakami's writing style, sparse, simple, deep, thought provoking. Her stories stay with me.
Another of her short story collections is appearing in translation later this year Dragon Palace

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Audio Book Review: The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer, translated by Howard Curtis, narrated by Greg Lockett, Stephanie Dufrense, Todd Kramer.

The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer by Joël Dicker
Translated by Howard Curtis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm on a roll. This is the second book I have read by this author. I now realise I'm reading them in the reverse order to which he wrote them, but not that the books are in any way connected. The Enigma of Room 622 and The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer are both thoroughly engaging thrillers.

This one is set in the USA, in the Hamptons and is a detective driven crime novel. Once again Dicker has the reader unwrapping the onion, layer by layer as she encounters all his twists and revelations in this compelling read. Once again I couldn't put it down. Once again Dicker plays with timelines.

Here we have the sleepy resort town of Orfea in 1994 and in 2014. In 2014 amateur actors are putting on the lead play in the town's literary festival. In 1994 during its opening festival the town mayor, wife, his son, and a jogger are gunned down during the first play. Dicker twists with the play on parallels, dipping back and forth between the two time periods. His back stories to his character are well fleshed out creating people who would come alive on any screen dramatisation. The audio version I listened to likewise had a suit of narrators - Greg Lockett, Stephanie Dufrense, Todd Kramer.

Book Review: The Enigma of Room 622 by Joël Dicker, Translated by The Enigma of Room 622 narrated by Chris Harper

The Enigma of Room 622 by Joël Dicker
Translated by Robert Bononno
Narrated by Chris Harper 

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Just the tonic! I needed a riveting, engaging book. This is a murder mystery written within the framing story of a writer writing a novel about solving an unsolved murder mystery whilst coping with having been left by his girlfriend. The murder is solved by unwrapping the case as if a writer was about to write a book about it, as each layer is unwrapped the clues are there to help the reader, but of course the plot seems to twist and turn. 

I will not say anything about the plot twists as that would absolutely spoil the book. Suffice to say the way the book is written swings back and back quite freely on different timelines within the story and I now some folks don't like that but it didn't cause any issue for me keeping up with when we were. I read this almost 600 pg book in 4 sittings, and would have done it in 3 if I'd been more organized about other things. 

I'd never come across this author before I read this review in World Literature Today (WLT). Its very pleasingly narration meant I enjoyed the book so much I've ordered two of his others books from my local library The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair and The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer

Book Review: Monsieur Linh and His Child, translated by Euan Cameron

Monsieur Linh and His Child by Philippe Claudel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

145 pages (in my library's large print edition) of absolute magic. This story will make you cry whilst filling you with hope and joy. Two middle aged men meet on a park bench. The two men do not share a language but they share so much. One is a native of the western country, presumably France, where they meet, he is a widower still grieving the loss of his wife. The other appears to be much older, life-ravaged and is also grieving. His is the loss of his wife years ago, his son and daughter in law and all their small village of 12 families by war. His past is now only memories, lost smells, one faded photo of him and his wife and the babe in his arms. They friendship blossoms over cigarettes and talking even though neither understands the others words they understand the sentiments. Monsieur Bark mistakes the other's good day greeting of Tao-lai as his name and the child's Sang diu as Sans Dieu. This mistake is not a problem until it is.

This is the first work I've read by Philippe Claudel and I found it to be a well crafted, hugely moving, short read.

Book Review: And the Wind Sees All by Guðmundur Andri Thorsson, Björg Árnadóttir (translator), Shai Sendik (Translator)

And the Wind Sees All by Guðmundur Andri Thorsson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read that the title of the English translation has been changed from the original Icelandic The Waltz of the Valeyri which for me would have described this book better. The Valeyri village choir will perform this evening in the village hall, Currently Kata is cycling there and all around her people are preparing and reading themselves for the evenings performance. Everyone different, everyone's life different, everyone with their own story. And each is told for the reader. In many ways the reader feels like a voyeur, eves dropping into each home with each turn of Kata's cycles wheels.

I particularly liked Sveni's story entitled Off sick. He lives with Grimur his "one eyed , yellow striped cat" who is "so old that all you can hear is an occasional creak", rather than a sympathetic purr. And Sveni needs his cat and his telephone call to his sister on days when he goes on a bender and the past comes back to haunt him. I thought this story was really well told - a whole life and its effects in 11 pages - that takes some writing skill. The way Kata's own story is just dropped into the book, as if in passing conversation, but it cuts like a knife.

Later there is a passage which describes the proliferation of houses that has come as the village has expanded beyond the traditional homes - "some of them are comically lopsided but inspired by beautiful thoughts; others are beautiful because of their history. Some or ugly because oft heir lack of maintenance testifies to sloth and apathy; and some are ugly because of something that has happened there. Some of them have been renovated by younger generation, others are derelict or have been demolished and replaced with box-like non-houses." When I read this it seemed to sum up the book for me, as if the passage referred not to houses but to the village's residents. Happy moments,sad moments, dark secrets kept, secrets told, families gone, love stories, wistful memories, and horrors that still haunt the derelict souls they created.

Peirene Press have definitely found a niche in the market with their short, under 200 page, novels in translation, and if you want to try them out and perhaps explore something other than Nordic Noir thrillers then this one may well be a good one to start with. Take a 'Waltz with the Valyeri' and see a whole world of life experiences. I just wish they'd do audiobooks!

Book Review: Good Offices by Evelio Rosero, tranls by Anna Maclean and Anna Milsom

Good Offices by Evelio Rosero
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A marvelous novella for reading around Halloween. Billed as a satire on the Catholic Church I was a little concerned before picking it up as I am not a great reader of the comical, quite often don't get written humour of any form, but this is one that left me desperately wanting #Guillermo del Toro to get hold of the movie rights. . Its gothic, its surreal, its horror, its Bacchanalian, it reminded me of Victor Hugo, of Robert Burns.

It simmers towards its climax on the night Father Almida and his right hand man the sacristan are off visiting his church's benefactor vainly trying to keep their income flowing, leaving the acolyte Tancredo (the Hunchback), Sabrina the sacristan's niece (Esmerelda) and the church's cooks, the three Lilias (the Three Witches) to host the last minute, last option locum priest Father Matamoros (Auld Nick) who has come to stand in for Father Almida at Mass. To their amazement this disheveled, drunken substitute sings the mass with the voice of an angel and transforms the parishioners. Who can blame them for not wanting Almida to return!

Beautifully translated by Anne Maclean (in this case along with Anna Milsom - the two of them have also translated his Feast of the Innocents) Maclean has also translated the other works by him ( The Armies and Stranger to the Moon and most recently Tono the Infallible) which have so far appeared in English. It would be great to get this translated work available as audio recording.

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Book Review: In the Company of Men by Véronique Tadjo, trans by John Cullen

In the Company of Men by Véronique Tadjo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I don't really know what to make of this book. In some ways it wasn't that great, sometimes a bit boring, but at other times what the author tried to do worked well.

Véronique Tadjo is a writer from Côte d'Ivoire of poetry, novels and children's books. One of her children's books is listed in the 100 Best African Writing of the 20th century https://www.african-writing.com/seven...

Here she has written the story of the 2014 - 2016 Ebola epidemic that scoured West African countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. It has been translated from French to English by John Cullen, who also translated Yasmina Khadra's Swallows of Kabul which I read some years ago. I listen to this on the Audible veriosn narrated by Je Nie Fleming and I have to say I did not enjoy this narration, I found her American intonation very off putting.

As for the book itself, it is a strange compilation of essentially first person narratives from various people who experienced the Ebola outbreak including a carrier of the disease, nurse, a person who buries the dead, a survivor, a nurse, the evacuated infected volunteer, the scientist, the adopter of child survivors, the poet who lost his financée. There are also first person narrative chapters by the Baobab tree, the Virus itself and the Bat. For those of us who followed this event on the TV News as it happened from the safety of our homes we will recognise all the stories.

For me the work was a bit too sprawling, and it wasn't until the final chapters that it rose up and she really found her voice, particularly the chapter by the Virus and by the much maligned Bat. She caught the right mood there, decrying Man, our interaction with Nature, raising questions about global aid, how to face similar impending crises, how to rebuild.

I think it was an ambitious structure to attempt and clearly based on research and interviews. It is not a non fiction book and doesn't read like one although other reviewers have mentioned it read as such to them. It is a very creative piece which doesn't on the whole come off as well as it might have, which is a shame considering the parts that do within its short 160 pages .

Short Story ChapBook Review: Friendship For Grown-Ups by Nao-Cola Yamazaki, translated by Polly Barton

Friendship For Grown-Ups by Nao-Cola Yamazaki
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is my first read from this series of chapbooks beautifull produced by a collaboration between University of East Anglia (famous for its writing MA) , Writers' Centre Norwich, and Norwich University of the Arts - see https://www.strangers.press/keshiki

Nao-Cola Yamazaki was not a familiar writer to me, her 3 stories in this chapbook are all translated by Polly Barton, see https://www.pollybarton.net , who is the translator of a few Japanese women writers that are on my to be read list.

The 3 three linked stories total 45 pages and are bound in an 'arty' cover somewhat reminiscent of the 70s and are introduced with a Foreward written by surreal short story writer Aimee Bender.

The first story, entitled "A Genealogy", is a downright 'weird' meditation on evolution and the genealogical lineage to the character of Kandagawa.

In the second story, entitled "The Untouchable apartment" we again meet Kandagawa whose somewhat dream like state is interrupted by a phone call from her previous boyfriend, Mano. They end up going to see their old apartment which now no longer exists, just like their relationship. They spend the day together but Kandagawa realises she is no longer the girl she was when they were together four years ago - not quite Jesse and Celine or Before Sunrise / Before Midnight.

"Lose your Private Life" , the third story is about a young women Terumi Yano, writing under a pseudonym of Waterumi Yano, as she struggles to come with what this means for her identity as she becomes more well known as a writer, how new people she meets will only know Waterumi and never again know the Teruni that her university friends Mano and Kandagawa know.

These weren't stories that 'blew me away' but at points did intrigue me. I thought about whether there was an autobiographical element to the final one or whether this was a clever slight of words illusion on the part of the author for example when she had Waterumi's book be entitled "Friendship for Grown-ups"

Book Review: The Sickness by Alberto Barrera Tsyzka Translated by Margaret Jull Costa

The Sickness by Alberto Barrera Tyszka


An intriguing choice of topic for a novel. This is a beautiful tender subtle rendering of how illness affects people, how obession is addictive and drives our actions, how knowledge of imenent death affects us and our choices. The 4 characters of the novel Dr Javier Miranda, his son Dr Andrés Miranda, medical secretary Karina, and the patient Ernesto Durán are each afflicted in different ways. For Andrés and his father, sickness is tangible, it is cancer, and the subsequent changes that makes to ones body. For Durán it is unreal, an illusion but it is also an obsession as he stalks the Dr in order to get attention - the drug he needs. This he only receives because Katrina takes it upon herself to replay to his emails and in doing so begins at first to empathise and then to mirror Ernesto's symptoms. The plot of the story unfortunately runs dry leaving the reader only with the treatise itself, and some loose ends character wise. The writing is lovely, itself addictive, the English translation (translated by Margaret Jull Costa and shortlisted for Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2011) working really well for this reader who finished the novel pondering the big questions about informed consent, telling or not telling patients the truth about their condition and what to do when you are told you have a month to live.

ashramblings verdict 3* a mixed reaction to it due to the lack of development of plot and character but I was interested enough by the writing to read another of his novels in the future.


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Book Review: Ways of Going Home by Alejandro Zambra, Translated by Megan McDowell

Ways of Going Home by Alejandro Zambra,
Translated by Megan McDowell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This short novel of 138 pages moves about - between a writer and his own life and the life of his characters in his writing , between the present time and the past - a past in Chile during and after the Pinochet years. It represents not just the voice of the post revolution generation but of todays Latin American writers from the generation post Marquez. First there is the story of the young nameless boy and Claudia, the girl he adores, and her Uncle Raul, the boys neighbour. Then there is the storyline of the nameless writer, who is writing their story and his ex Eme. Both stories coalesce off the paper as the four chapters alternate between the writer's fiction and his reality. But this is also a novel about writing, about telling a story, with initially fictional scenes being based on real ones, and real ones reutilised in the fiction. There is a melange of the real and the fictional, a doubling of everything, a redrafting of everything just as any writer would when working on his novel.

It has some memorable passages as this author's style is very natural, smooth in translation (which won the English PEN Award in 2013) the reader feeling she is listening to the man remember. For example,

"I prefer writing to having written"

"That's what we grw up believing, that the novel belonged t oour parents. We cursed them, and also took refuge in their shadows, relieved. While the adults killed or were killed, we drew pictures in the corner. While the country was falling to pieces, we were learning to talk, to walk to fold napkins in the shape of boats, of airplanes. While the novel was happening, we played hide-and-seek, we played at disappearing." Beautifuly poignant ambiguity there!

"To read is to cover one's face. And to write is to show it."

"I want a quiet, simple life. A life with walks in the park"

And finally as he ponders a quote attributed to Tim O'Brien 'What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end', he writes "We remember the sounds of images.......We ought to simply describe those sounds, those stains on memory"


ashramblings verdict 4* Thanks to who ever it was who originally recommended this writer to me

Review: Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata, translated by Edward G Seidensticker

Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata
Translated by Edward G Seidensticker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Kikuji is invited to a tea ceremony in honour of his dead father. The ceremony is conducted by his father's mistress Chikako Kurimoto who has taken it upon herself to as as go-between to organise a meeting for him to "view" a prospective bride Yukiko Inamura. However at the gathering is also Fumiko Ota and her mother who had been his father's long time lover at the time of his death. Kikuji begins a relationship with Mrs Ota which brings much suffering to all. After Mrs Ota's suicide, he transfers his desires to Fumiko.

Just as in the tea ceremony where every move is precisely scripted and choreographed, so every action of the jealous Chikako is laden with meaning. Control and manipulation in abundance, smouldering desires and fierce passions in equal measure are all told with incredible subtlety just like the minute movements within the tea ceremony, the shape of different styled tea cups and bowls, the bamboo whisk stirring up the liquid, mixing up leaf and water.

Kawabata weaves each object involved in the tea ceremony into his story, each with its own significance - a bowl owned by one mistress passes to the hands of another, who uses it to serve the son, becoming a poisoned chalice

But the perfection strived for in the tea ceremony is not found in life - bowls are broken, hearts are broken, life is taken, love is lossed.

ashramblings verdict 3* Kawabata's writings are known for their beautiful language, obsessive sexuality and contempt for the era. But this one suffers from a little too much repetition in the later stages -  it may be the translation although the translator Edward Seidensticker does have a respected reputation for translating number of Japanese authors, or it may be stylistic but its reasoning escaped me and detracted only in places from what is otherwise a lovely lyrical novella.



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Review: The Blue Fox by Sjón, translated by Victoria Cribb

The Blue Fox by Sjón
Translated by Victoria Cribb
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Baldur Skuggason is the pastor turned hunter intent on tracking and killing the mysterious blue fox roaming around the snow covered lands of Iceland in the 1883. The middle section tells us of Fridik Fridjonsson some sort of herbalist, who cares for a Downs Syndrome girl Abba whom he "adopted" after she was found shackled to the timbers of a beached ship. The author binds these characters together in a very credible magical tale. ****SPOILER ALERT*** Yes the pastor gets his comeuppance for becoming a hunter and for banning Abba from his church to halt her offkey passionate singing of hymns. It is not until the very end that Fridik tells the reader the truth he found out about Abba's origins and circumstances which led to her enslavement on the ship.

ashramblings verdict 4* Part mystery part folktale, it's beautiful! I especially liked the writing in the opening section about the hunting of the blue fox. This novella received the 2005 Nordic Council Literature Prize. This is second book by Sjón I've read, the other was Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was - most impressed by both.

Both books are translated by Victoria Cribb who seems to translate a number of Icelandic authors. I need to investigate more of these.

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Review: Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was by Sjón, trans. from Icelandic by Victoria Cribb

Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was by Sjón

Victoria Cribb (Translator)

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With a back page smothered in compliments by A.S. Byatt, Junot Diaz, and David Mitchell, and the black, white and grey picture on its cover and a flash of red tells me its Nordic, then one just has to pick up the book!


The story begins in Reykjavík in the Autumn of 1918. Máni is an orphan who lives with his only relative, his great-grandmother's sister. He is an outsider, earning money through sex with men and spending it going to the cinema. His is infatuated by a mysterious motorcycle-riding local girl who resembles the star of the 1915 film “Les Vampires,” one of his favorites movies, who gives him a red scarf. The island, on the brink of its independence, is not escaping the Spanish Flu pandemic which soon grips the town and decimates its population resulting in the closure of the cinemas. Máni catches the flu but survives and is roped into help the local doctor and undertaker carrying the sick in one direction and bodies in the other. ***SPOILER ALERT*** But Máni gets embroilled in a sodomy scandal with a Danish sailor and is exiled. I for one did not see the ultimate end coming when we learn the circumstances of his birth and the first five years of his life before going to life with the old woman who brought him up.

The writing in this novella is refreshingly simple and straightforward in its language, vocabulary and style. There is none of the common overabundant use of adjectives here. Each word counts. It is the writing of a poet and makes for a great read.
I loved the way the Great War raging to the south of the country hangs over the story and every so often the author uses it like a painter uses light to beautifully convey the story to us readers, for example "There is no cease-fire in the influenza's war on the inhibatants of the town" and after fumigating the cinemas he writes "The greenish-yellow gas that had lately felled the young men on the battlefields of Europe no drifts and rools through the picture houses of Reykjavik"

ashramblings verdict 4* A novel in praise of cinema, the story of a young gay man in a time and place other than the social climate of today, the story of an outsider's survival. Excellent read, highly recommended. I've already ordered more of Sjón's books from my local library.

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Review: Fire in the Blood by Irène Néminrovsky

Fire in the Blood by Irène Némirovsky
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The hidden passions of small town country life seen through the eyes of the aging Silvio who had once had the "fire in the blood" of tempestuous youth, who hankers for its still and who sees it sparkle and die in the ardour, desire, infidelities, mischiefs of the younger generation. I'm a believer that what and who we settle for says so much about us, and I see that in the characters and their choices int his novel. Why does conformity and comfort drown passion? Why do we bleieve blindy that it is only the stuff of youth and not possible in later years? We're all the sadder for it.

ashramblings verdict 3* Beautiful flowing prose by Némirovsky's English translator Sandra Smith, This is a short novella of 122 pages in the large print edition I was able to borrow from the library. Jim Norton, the narrator of Audible's audio version has a mature voice well suited to that of Silvio.

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